Michaela school in Wembley uses lesson scripts from a US publisher. There is evidence the approach can work with some pupils.
Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian

In a converted office block in an unprepossessing corner of west London, a year 10 class is working with intense concentration. The walls are grey and virtually bare; on the whiteboard is a cartoon-style story about a pilot marooned on a desert island.

At all times eyes are either down or focused on the school’s deputy head of English, Sarah Cullen. It’s as if there’s no need for any other visual stimulation, for she’s a one-woman whirlwind: the lesson is conducted at a frenetic pace; questions are rapid-fire and answered with an instant sea of hands.

“Nice! Good pace, Angelo!” Cullen cries at one point. At another she appears to admonish herself: “Come ON! Too slooow!”

At the end of each written exercise – for instance, adding a missing full-stop and capital letter to a sentence in a printed workbook – she’ll shout out: “3-2-1 ...!” and clap her hands for the children to stop.

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The lesson materials are produced by an American publisher, McGraw-Hill, and Cullen has a corresponding booklet with her instructions: “CHECK: Is each sentence punctuated correctly? ... Did you indent the first word of each paragraph and begin the paragraph with the right sentence?”

The generic name for what’s going on at the Michaela community school, a free school in Wembley, is direct instruction – a scripted lesson. This group of students are using these particular materials because they’re struggling with the English language, but most classes in the school have similar features – children and a teacher working through printed lesson materials, a quick-fire question and response interspersed with short written exercises.

Direct instruction is not widely used in the UK but it is on the rise, along with other structured or semi-scripted methods such as Shanghai maths – known here as maths mastery – and phonics programmes, in which teachers are given explicit instructions and materials.

The term is becoming a buzz phrase: the schools minister, Nick Gibb, recently made a speech in which he praised these methods: “The evidence is clear – however much it may shock the pre-conceived expectations of some education experts ... teacher-led instruction is more effective than child-centred, inquiry-based approaches.”

Direct instruction (DI) was developed in the US in the 1960s. It is controversial – a recent Guardian Secret Teacher column likened being on a maths mastery programme to the training in a call centre, and teachers’ chat forums have seen similar negative comments.

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But there is some strong evidence that it works, particularly with pupils from deprived backgrounds or at risk of falling behind. In one US study, results from an experimental programme involving more than 200,000 at-risk pupils found those taught using DI still outperformed their peers years later.

There is new evidence here on the subject, too: Jeremy Hodgen, a professor of maths education at the UCL Institute of Education, has conducted two reviews of the evidence on what works in maths teaching, one for the Nuffield Foundation and one for the Education Endowment Foundation. The reviews are due to be published this month, and their findings will be largely positive.

“We found a variety of positive effects for direct instruction,” he says. “It appears to be effective in certain circumstances.

“If I were in a school now I would be using DI some of the time, for particular things where kids might have been having some difficulty. Most kids struggle at some point. It isn’t a panacea for everything – I wouldn’t use it all the time for all children, and it wouldn’t work for any children all the time.”

Other structured programmes are also showing success with under-performing pupils. A large-scale study by the LSE on synthetic phonics lessons found that while they did not improve the reading score of the average child over time, they did help those who were at risk.

Tom Bennett, the DfE’s behaviour tsar and the founder of ResearchED, a teaching conference company, says DI is much misunderstood. “Direct instruction is mischaracterised as ‘drill and kill’ – the idea that you lecture to passive students, that you don’t give feedback and that they’re not allowed to object, question or query. But you speak to the students a lot. You explain things incredibly clearly. Rather than: ‘I would like you to find out for yourself,’ it’s, ‘Here’s what you need to do to progress to the next level.’”

Tom Bennett, the DfE’s behaviour tsar: ‘Rather than: “I would like you to find out for yourself,” it’s: “Here’s what you need to do to progress to the next level.”’ Photograph: Rex

Pre-produced programmes with very explicit instructions for teachers, such as Read Write Inc Phonics, produced by a former headteacher, Ruth Miskin, are now widely used – hers is in more than a quarter of primary schools. And while there’s agreement among many experts that they can work well when used judiciously by highly skilled teachers in the right circumstances, they can be open to abuse.

Kelly – not her real name – began work as a teaching assistant last year at a primary academy, with a view to beginning in-school teacher training the following term. On day one she observed a teacher taking a class using Miskin’s structured phonics approach. On day two she was asked to take a mixed-age class of 28 early years pupils by herself.

“The head of early years explained I would have the phonics training when I started in September because it was very expensive,” she says. “I said I didn’t really know what I was doing, I could try but I didn’t feel very confident. I literally just followed point by point through the lesson plan. I had to look up Ruth Miskin on YouTube – I would have hoped for more support. I was told it’s really simple, just follow what’s there. I felt my concerns were minimised.”

Kelly decided teaching was not for her, and left. Miskin says this is not how her programme should be used – those using it with whole classes should be qualified teachers who have received her specific training.

“It’s outrageous if people are doing this,” she says. “Any headteacher who thinks they can buy a scheme off the shelf that’s going to solve their problems is fooling themselves. The programme is dependent on a whole pedagogy and way of teaching.”

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She says the idea is to offer schools a thought-through curriculum so that they don’t have to invent one.

“A primary teacher has – how many hours of training? Not very much. They suddenly get the label of professional as they go into a classroom, and they start to reinvent the wheel for nine subjects,” she says. “What I’m saying is, I’ve found a really good route for ensuring full participation in lessons.”

There is wide agreement that whatever their benefits, these kinds of lessons can never be the only show in town. The Edge Foundation promotes project-based learning and lessons that are relevant to the world of work. Its director of policy and research, Olly Newton, says employers value work-readiness more than academic qualifications. In an increasingly technological world, softer skills will be crucial.

“We talk about the rise of the robots,” he says, “but we’re still going to need that human element. Trying to mechanise people to behave like machines is not what the labour market is looking for. It’s going to be looking for individuals who are resilient and adaptable and can offer human skills that robots can’t. They’ll want problem-solving – things we can’t programme a machine to do.”

At Michaela school – known for its emphasis on discipline – there’s no embarrassment about taking a hard-nosed approach. The deputy head, Katie Ashford, came to Michaela after working in a school with more pupil-centred methods. “It’s quite a seductive idea that pupils should discover things and that learning should be this journey. I love the idea, but I don’t think that’s been my experience,” she says.

“Michaela is a very different school in that we value teacher subject knowledge and teacher expertise to get the best out of every child. Pupils are far more engaged, far more excited about learning, far more inspired, more interested and more successful when a direct instruction approach is taken.”